Subway Rat

         Once upon a time...a young man found himself in desperate need of a number One train to take him to a far away land called midtown. Call me the Rapunzel of Harlem. My metal carpet ride is nowhere to be found and there isn't a subway light in sight. My hope of taking a new dance class and making the most out of this day is dwindling. Today my counter productivity truly astounds me. I'm trapped underground in a station covered in graffiti and garbage.....home sweet home. I'm running in a hamster wheel and expecting a different result for some reason. It's the very definition of crazy. The energy is getting restless down here in the tunnels and the people are getting collectively more and more nervous. Wait......a train cometh!!! I feel the hope flooding my chest and I almost burst with relief. Hot jazz here I come! Then it blares it's nasty horn and charges past not even stopping at all. Damn you New York! I've been left in the dust yet again. Then another one comes along finally and picks up the massive, agitated crowd. It takes us one stop and then kicks all of us off and goes out of service due to "breaking problems". I flat line...........................................................................................................................
Sometimes I really hate this f*n town! The angry energy of a pissed off New Yorker is just as unsettling as a flight that encounters extreme turbulence, so much so that even the flight attendants look worried. Fasten your seat belt folks because you're gonna need a rape shower after this commute. It's like being slapped across the face by mayor Bloomberg every single day. When I lean as far as I can over the tracks to look for the ghost train that just isn't coming I realize my efforts to strain are in vein. Where's the hope in all this I think aloud? I've now become the crazy person talking to himself that I'm usually judging from a safe distance. People are filing in in twos and threes, pushing and clicking through the turnstiles in a constant stream, yet still there's no train. Only tumbleweed. The MTA has abused me today along with thousands of other late New Yorkers that desperately needed to get somewhere.......and Yesterday!

         I blew off an audition today and decided to take a new dance class as to not totally waste the day. And now it seems that choice has dominoed into only more delayed city chaos. Then, to my horror, everyone suddenly started moving towards the exit en mass to evacuate the station for some police investigation. There was no game to be won at this point because my IPhone ear buds prevented me from hearing the scratchy announcement that we were basically about to be fucked with no lube and no warning.  Acknowledging a silver lining is out of the question when you're talking about this level of disappointment. Living here is a lose lose sometimes and the prices continue to rise even though the quality of life doesn't. I'd rather be sitting in bumper to bumper rush hour traffic in LA in my own car, in my own clean space where no one can touch me, ask me for money, or rob me. Rusty old trains thread the needle of this ridiculous town deep underneath the city streets and my career feels like it's becoming a virtual skip stop due to an eternity of track construction. Ladies and gentlemen....pardon the inconvenience but we will be rerouting this train straight to Hell where the urban circus freaks never rest. This city self-proclaims its own ultimate greatness yet leaves people wanting, frustrated, and closed off. This is my fallen Rome. My home.                                      
        This town might as well be Mars as far as the Big Apple tourists are concerned. They peer through cameras out the windows of those domed double stacked red tour buses, protected behind the glass like curious suburban fish in a tank....eyes bugged out in disbelief at how anyone can live here. I wonder the same thing sometimes. You can always tell a tourist from a hard New Yorker if they're wearing mom jeans and some kind of Times Square paraphernalia. An M&M sweatshirt, white tennis shoes, a Disney bag, and a scrunchy gives a girl away every time. But for all my bitching there are of coarse the small details of this town that have me spoiled....like having the option to eat anything I want at almost any time of day. I love to take cabs at a moments notice when I'm geographically challenged like I am now. And I enjoy the option to go to restaurants and bars as late as I can stand. It beats the deafening quiet that comes with serenity. That's a silence I'm afraid to fill. Immediate access to live music and theatre is something I take for granted as the weeks come and go. This city has bewitched me so completely that I no longer believe that there is life beyond the boroughs. You mean the edge of the world doesn't completely drop off the second you leave Manhattan?! You could've fooled me and millions of other city snobs. Even going to the Jersey shore feels as long as a Tokyo flight sometimes. I forget that people lead fulfilling lives without all the stress of the hyper-urban struggle. I've met fabulous people that have their shit together and live in bumfuck nowhere that I still look at like gerbils in a science experiment.....waiting and watching......wondering when and if they will crack under the pressure of making babies(because that is what you do) and the idea of picturesque, ideal happiness. Stress is stress no matter where you are or what pretty bow you slap on it. We all operate under different levels of it, be it in the country, or right in the middle of some crazy metropolis . I scurry and scuffle around town like a dirty little subway rat jacked up on Red Bull but without the wings, hoping for show biz scraps and a fucking break whatever that means. TAXI!!!!!